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Life Arts    H4'ed 11/5/19

Jordan Peterson's Critiques of Political-Correctness Zealotry (REVIEW ESSAY)

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I see Pope Francis' 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) as his counterpart, roughly, to Professor Peterson's 2018 self-help book 12 Rules to Live By. Even though the pope does not explicitly refer to anything in his 2013 apostolic exhortation as rules to live by, he does set forth four principles to guide our thinking that in effect function like rules to live by:

(1) "Time is greater than space" (paragraphs numbered 222-225);

(2) "Unity prevails over conflict" (paragraphs numbered 226-230);

(3) "Realities are more important than ideas" (paragraphs numbered 231-233);

(4) "The whole is greater than the part" (paragraphs numbered 234-237).

But, in effect, Donald Trump lives by the rule "Conflict prevails over unity" and so do many culture warriors of various stripes.

Now, the Italo-Argentine Jesuit priest Father Bergoglio, who later became Pope Francis, formulated these four principles in his incomplete doctoral dissertation on the Italo-German priest and theologian and literary critic Romano Guardini (1885-1968), the author of the 1950 book in German The End of the Modern World, 2nd ed., translated by Joseph Theman and Herbert Burke (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books/ Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1998; translation first published in 1956 by Sheed and Ward), which the pope explicitly quotes in his 2013 apostolic exhortation in the paragraph numbered 224.

In addition, in Pope Francis' eco-encyclical, he repeatedly refers to Guardini's 1950 book in German (see the end-notes numbered 83, 84, 85,87, 88, 92, 144, and 154).

But The End of the Modern World that Guardini announces in his famous short 1950 book in German refers to the end of the modern world of thought that certain deconstructionists in Yale's English Department announced the same deconstructionists denounced by Professor Peterson. However, if we see Guardini's famous short book as a valid and viable Roman Catholic take on Western cultural history, then we may also see Pope Francis' four principles (or rules to live by) as his Roman Catholic take on the kind of deconstructionist thought advanced by certain people in Yale's English Department especially his explicit rule that "Realities are more important than ideas," because ideas can be deconstructed in various ways.

As far as I know, Professor Ong published something that can be construed as a rule for life and an antidote to chaos in his article "'A.M.D.G.': Dedication or Directive?" in the now defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Review for Religious, volume 11, number 5 (September 15, 1952): pages 257-264; reprinted in the same journal, volume 50, number 1 (1991): pages 35-42; also reprinted in volume three of Professor Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pages 1-8).

Ong further discusses the Jesuit motto Ad majorem Dei gloriam (Latin meaning "For the greater glory of God") as a rule for discernment in decision making in his 1986 book Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press, pages 78-81 and 87), the published version of Professor Ong's 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto.

In any event, in my estimate, I would profile Pope Francis as

(1) accessing the optimal form of the masculine Warrior archetype of maturity,

(2) accessing the optimal form of the King archetype of masculine maturity,

(3) accessing the optimal form of the masculine Magician archetype of maturity, but

(4) stuck in the Impotent Lover "shadow" form of the masculine Lover archetype of maturity (because of his celibacy). Hey, three out of four optimal forms of the masculine archetypes of maturity isn't bad.

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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